WHERE MIRAGES ARE BORN

Field sessions will be combined with group discussions and image reviews. Teaching will be integrated into the journey and adapted to each participant’s experience. We will work on natural light, composition, landscape and architectural photography, environmental portraiture, respectful engagement with local communities, visual sequencing, image selection and the development of a personal narrative. When conditions allow, the programme will also include sunrise, twilight and night photography.

Teaching Themes

Reading natural light throughout the changing hours of the day; composition and the organisation of space; landscape and cultural landscape photography; vernacular architecture and the relationship between form and territory; environmental portraiture and a respectful approach to local communities; street photography in markets and inhabited places; a considered use of colour and black and white; building sequences and developing a personal visual narrative; image selection and editing; photography at twilight, dawn and, whenever conditions allow, beneath the night sky.

The purpose is not simply to collect views of southern Tunisia, but to understand what gives a place its photographic meaning—and to transform that understanding into an authentic body of work.

Essential Equipment

Tripod

A sturdy tripod is one of the most important tools for this workshop. It is essential for dawn, sunset and night photography, and provides greater precision when working with long exposures or carefully constructed compositions. Choose a compact, reliable model that can be carried comfortably throughout the day. A carbon-fibre tripod is particularly suitable, as it combines good stability with considerably less weight.

Filters and Lens Hood

Filters are fundamental in the desert, where the contrast between bright skies, sunlit sand and deep shadow can be extreme. A high-quality system of cinematic filters—particularly neutral-density and graduated neutral-density filters—offers greater control over exposure and tonal balance, helping preserve detail and achieve a more considered visual language. A good lens hood is equally essential: it reduces flare, shields the front element from stray light and offers valuable protection from wind-blown sand. A bellows lens hood, such as those made by Lee Filters, is especially effective.

LPW recognises that high-quality filters and a bellows lens hood are valuable but often expensive accessories that few photographers own. For this reason, London Photographic Workshop makes a complete, professional, top-of-the-range Lee Filters kit—including filters and bellows lens hoods—available for participants to use during the workshop.

Ziplock

One of the most useful items in the desert is a supply of press-to-seal ziplock freezer bags and strong elastic bands. Sand finds its way into almost every camera bag or backpack, especially during a sandstorm. Protect each piece of equipment individually, preferably using two bags secured with an elastic band. It is the lightest practical alternative to a Pelican case. The secret? Ziplock.

Over the years, we have developed a welcome package to make your stay as comfortable as possible and help you make the most of your experience. It brings together a thoughtful selection of essentials—things that are easily forgotten or can be difficult to arrange from abroad.

We begin with one of the most important: staying connected.

Your welcome package includes:

Everything is packed in a protective, waterproof expedition dry bag, ready to accompany you throughout the experience.

Our students arrive from all over the world, so it is perfectly possible that you may land at an airport other than Tunis. This is not a problem. Please let us know where and when you will arrive on Sunday 8 November, at least seven days in advance.

We will arrange your transfer to Tataouine, and the cost is included in the workshop fee. This allows the whole group to meet on Sunday evening before the photographic programme begins.

Over a relaxed welcome dinner offered by London Photographic Workshop, we will have time to introduce ourselves, get to know one another and begin the journey together before the first day in the field.

The seven-day photographic itinerary runs from Monday 9 to Sunday 15 November, beginning in Tataouine and ending in Tozeur. Daily timings and routes remain responsive to light, access, weather and local conditions.

The workshop concludes on Sunday afternoon. We strongly recommend that participants do not arrange their departure for Sunday evening. The final night in Tozeur is offered by London Photographic Workshop, allowing the group to share one last dinner, reflect on the work and travel onward comfortably on Monday 16 November.

The seven photographic days carry the group across the Dahar, the edge of the Grand Erg Oriental, the chotts and the mountain oases. Each place is chosen not simply as somewhere to sleep, but as a position from which the following day’s light can be reached without haste.

It is the first shared table of the journey: a quiet beginning inside the mountain, before the road, and the moment in which a group of individual photographers begins to acquire a common rhythm.

Its rooms are formed from caves adapted within the historic fabric of the village. Here, accommodation becomes an act of proximity: we sleep inside the same stone we photograph, close to the paths, inhabited spaces and long shadows of the Dahar.

Here the accommodation belongs directly to the photographic experience: dusk over the dunes, the silence after the heat, and the possibility of returning to the landscape before sunrise.

After the road from Ksar Ghilane, its quiet offers a necessary pause before the salt landscapes of Chott el-Jérid.

Its courtyards, terraces and local brickwork keep us inside the visual language of the oasis city, providing a base for Chott el-Jérid, Nefta, Chott el-Gharsa and Ong Jemel.

That evening, instead of returning immediately to Tozeur, we will stay at Restaurant Hôtel Cascade Tamerza — Chez Mounir. This is not a staged desert luxury, but a modest local place whose hospitality keeps us within the life of the mountain oases.

We remain together for one final dinner and an unhurried conversation around the work, before participants continue their journeys on Monday 16 November.

In the Tunisian Sahara, the light changes with the terrain: dunes, palm groves and salt landscapes invite us to pause and observe. We will travel in 4x4 vehicles, getting close to our photographic locations where access allows. The oases of Douz and Ksar Ghilane can be reached by road; access to tracks and sandy areas farther into the desert will be assessed with local operators. Walks to photographic locations may cross soft sand, uneven ground and gentle rises; climbing dunes takes more effort and should not be confused with a level stroll. Walking times and difficulty will be specified for the routes actually selected. Closed footwear, water and protection from sun and wind will help you concentrate on photography in greater comfort. Any variation will always be decided with the group’s safety and the quality of the experience as the first priorities.

Each participant will receive a carefully prepared printed Field Guide: a practical companion to the entire workshop, containing essential contact details, emergency information, precise maps and the travel guidance needed for every stage of the itinerary. We deliberately favour a printed format over a digital one: in areas where mobile data, network coverage and electrical access can be intermittent, a physical guide remains reliable, immediate and always at hand.

Whenever you move away from the group to make photographs, we ask that you do so in pairs. This simple practice allows participants to work independently while preserving awareness, communication and mutual support.

In desert areas, radios will be provided to maintain communication between participants, groups and vehicles. Local mobile phones with Tunisian SIM cards will also be made available, giving every participant access to emergency calls and the ability to make local calls within Tunisia.

After leaving Tataouine, with the stone villages, salt expanses and dissolving boundaries of the Dahar still active in the eye, the images need the cohort that followed those mirages together.

I did not include six months of post-workshop contact by chance, nor as a simple service.

Many years ago, I was teaching an online course that could easily have felt impersonal. Instead, when it ended, the group did not want to dissolve. We had never all sat around the same table, yet years later we are still a living community. From that experience came conversations, magazines, books, friendships and shared ways of looking.

It taught me how valuable a small circle of people can be when they have lived and worked through an experience together.

For this reason, every workshop includes six months of continued contact at no additional cost: a private group, image sharing, feedback, and a form of ongoing tuition shaped by cultural prompts — a book, an image, a thought, an exhibition, or an occasion that may open a new direction in the work.

The event ends. The adventure in photography begins.

8–16 November 2026. Across the seven working days, from 9 to 15 November, in the Tataouine region, sunrise moves from approximately 06:42 to 06:48, while sunset draws earlier from approximately 17:22 to 17:17. The photographic day is compact, with the most articulate light gathered close to its edges.

Morning belongs to the Dahar. Low light enters the folds of the hills, separates stone from earth and gives the ksour and troglodyte architecture their depth. By midday, the sun becomes more vertical and descriptive; the strongest work will often return in the final hours, when walls, ridges and faces begin to hold shadow again.

The photographic week opens beneath a very young moon, close to new moon, and moves towards first quarter. The early nights therefore favour darkness and a more visible desert sky; later evenings bring a growing crescent, useful as a quiet element of scale above the villages, dunes and salt landscapes.

November in southern Tunisia is usually mild by day and cooler after sunset, often around 11–22°C, with dry air, limited rainfall and occasional wind capable of lifting dust across exposed ground. These are seasonal ranges, not a forecast; cloud, haze and desert wind will be read each day as part of the work.

At Chott el-Jérid and Chott el-Gharsa, light behaves differently from the mountain villages. Salt, distance and refraction can flatten the horizon at noon and turn it into a mirage; dawn and late afternoon restore texture, colour and direction.

Here the Light Map follows three transformations: stone becoming architecture, salt becoming illusion, and darkness becoming a field in which the desert sky can finally be photographed.